Simultaneously, Devon heard low tympanic beats, hollow and strange and barely audible extended notes. Through the soles of his shoes, he felt vibrations in the concrete floor, subtle waves resonating in time with the drumming.
He didn’t become alarmed, because the door and window monitors remained operative, and all the indicator lights were green on the board. No one was forcing entrance at any point. If the sound had grown louder and the accompanying vibrations had accelerated, Devon’s puzzlement and concern might have swelled into apprehension.
The phenomenon continued at a consistent level, however, and after about half a minute, the low drumming faded, the last of the vibrations passed through the floor, and the blue static receded from the plasma screens. The many security-camera points of view returned.
The elevator camera had a wide-angle lens and was mounted near the ceiling at a rear corner of the car, providing coverage of the entire interior, including the doors—which were closed. Earl Blandon was gone. Apparently the car had arrived at the third floor, and the ex-senator had disembarked.
Devon switched to the camera covering the short length of public corridor serving Apartments 3-A and 3-C, and then to the camera that provided a view of the entire long north-wing hallway on the third floor. No Earl Blandon. His was the first apartment in that wing, 3-D, overlooking the courtyard. He must have stepped out of the elevator, turned the corner, and let himself through his front door during the time that the video surveillance failed.
Devon cycled through all twenty-four cameras. Without exception, the public spaces were deserted. The Pendleton remained quiet and still. Evidently, above the basement, the sullen drumming and the vibrations had been so faint that, if anyone had been awakened, no one had been concerned enough to step out of his apartment and have a look around.
Whether upon arising at four o’clock in the morning, as now, or after work, Bailey Hawks preferred to swim laps with only the underwater lights, the rest of the long room dark, the pool a great glowing jewel, bright watery reflections fluttering like diaphanous wings across the white ceramic-tile walls and ceiling. The pleasantly warm pool, the astringent scent of chlorine, the
He got out of bed before dawn to exercise, have breakfast, and be at his desk when the markets opened, but rising early was not the cause of the exhaustion that he felt by every Friday evening. A day spent investing other people’s money could sometimes leave him as weary as any day of combat when he’d been a marine. At thirty- eight, he was in his sixth year as an independent wealth manager, after having worked for a major investment bank for three years following his military career. During his first year at the bank, he’d thought that eventually, as success built his confidence, he would be less oppressed by the responsibility to protect and grow his clients’ assets. But the burden never became lighter. Money could be a kind of freedom. If he lost a portion of someone’s investments, he would be throwing away a measure of that client’s liberty.
When Bailey was a boy, his mother called him “my guardian.” His failure to protect her was an embedded thorn, perpetually working its way through his mind all these years later, too deep to pluck out. He could atone, if at all, only by reliable service to others.
At the end of his fifth lap, he touched bottom with his feet and turned to face the farther end of the long rectangle of shimmering water, where he had entered by the submerged steps. The pool was five feet deep, and Bailey stood six two, so when he leaned back against the coping to rest before doing another five laps, the water rose not quite to his shoulders.
He smoothed his wet hair back from his face—and saw a dark form coming toward him underwater. He hadn’t been aware of anyone entering the pool after him. The rippled surface spun the quivering light and wavelet shadows into purling patterns that severely distorted the approaching figure. When you were submerged, the greater resistance made progress harder than doing laps on the surface, but this swimmer bored through the water as if he were a torpedo. The exertion needed to make such headway should have forced the man to breach for air before he could complete a hundred-foot length, but he appeared to be as fully at home underwater as any fish.
For the first time since his days in the Marine Corps, Bailey sensed mortal and imminent danger. Wasting not an instant second-guessing his instinct, he turned, pressed his palms flat atop the coping, and levered himself out of the pool, onto his knees. Behind him, someone seized his left ankle. He would have been pulled back into the water if he hadn’t kicked furiously with his right foot and struck what seemed to be his assailant’s face.
Released, Bailey scrambled to his feet, staggered two steps on the matte-finish tile, and turned, suddenly breathless, overcome by the irrational fear that he was in the presence of something inhuman, one mythical monster or another that was not merely mythical anymore. Nothing confronted him.
The underwater lamps were not as bright as they had been. In fact, the quality of the light had changed from crisp white to a sullen yellow. The blue water-line tile appeared green in this sour glow.
The dark shape moved under the surface, sleek, swift, streaking back toward the steps. Bailey hurried along the apron, trying to get a better look at the swimmer. Now acid-yellow, the pool appeared to be polluted, clear in some places but cloudy in others. Discerning details of the person—or thing—in the water proved difficult. He thought he could make out legs, arms, a basic human form, yet the overall impression was of something deeply strange.
For one thing, the swimmer didn’t frog kick, which was almost essential for making way underwater without swim fins, and he wasn’t using a breaststroke, either. He appeared to undulate with the muscular sinuosity of a shark, propelling himself in a way no human being could.
If Bailey had been more prudent than curious, he would have snared his thick terry-cloth robe from the hook on which it hung, slipped into it and his flip-flops, and hurried to the nearby security room in the west wing of the basement. Devon Murphy would be on duty there. But Bailey was transfixed by the eerie nature of the swimmer, by the otherworldly mood that settled on the room.
The building shuddered ever so slightly. A low rumble rose from the earth under the Pendleton’s foundation, and Bailey glanced at the floor in front of him, half expecting to see hairline cracks opening in the mortar joints between the tiles, though none did.
